


Just in Case

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-17
Updated: 2005-07-17
Packaged: 2019-03-10 22:12:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13510809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: A chance meeting in Africa.





	Just in Case

Fred doesn't really know what she's doing here. 

Oh, she knows what she's doing _here_ , in Africa. There's a Gorvald demon in Los Angeles who paid Wolfram & Hart an obscene amount of money to develop an antidote to the poison secreted by yet another kind of demon and deliver it to his brother-in-law, the head of their clan in Africa. He wouldn't allow it to be sent by courier, or even by one of Fred's staff; it had to be her or no one. 

She knows why she's not in the jet on her way back to Los Angeles tonight, too, even though she has a date with Knox that she hasn't had a chance to cancel--she'd have canceled even if she'd been at home, because things just aren't working out there, but that's beside the point--and the reason is that when she went to the site where she was supposed to meet with the clan chief, she found a massacre. Dead green demons, dead gray demons, and in the middle of it all, a dead human girl, and a man standing there with his head lowered and his hand clenched tight on the handle of an axe. 

And now she's sitting here in the back of a weather-beaten pickup truck, drinking a brand of beer she's never heard of, listening to the guy tell her about the girl she'd never met, and thinking that this is a lot like being in high school. Eleventh grade, right after Billy Chestnut drove into a telephone pole, and Fred and her friends had sat in the back of Billy's brother's truck and drank Budweiser until somebody's parents found them and made them go home. Fred remembered feeling kind of guilty, because she hadn't really known Billy, who was a year ahead of her at school and thought his brother's friends were nerdy stoner freaks, but Jimbo Chestnut had been her friend since fifth grade, and she thought she ought to be there for him. 

The guy's name is Xander, and Fred remembers hearing that name. From Angel; from Cordelia; from Willow, last year when she came to help them get Angel's soul back. Xander's from Sunnydale, and now he's working for the Watchers, or he is a Watcher, or something--Xander admitted he isn't a hundred percent clear on that, himself--and the dead girl was a Slayer. Her name was Maima, and she'd been fifteen years old, and Xander was taking her to Johannesburg to put her on a flight to England for training. They'd stopped in this village, and they'd found out about the demons--Fred couldn't help but be glad it wasn't their clients who were killing the locals; it was the other ones, and she doesn't let herself consider that it might only have been because the other ones got here first--and Maima had done what she was destined to do. 

And she'd died, and now Fred's sitting here with Xander, and she's listening to him talk about a girl she never knew at all, and he's only known for about two weeks. _This_ is the place she's not sure about, sitting in a truck in Africa, feeling kind of guilty because the only kind of sorrow she can muster up for the dead girl is the kind she'd feel for anyone who died too soon, trying to do what was right. But Xander's on their side, even if it sounds like his people aren't sure about that, and Xander grew up with Cordelia, which makes him kind of her friend once removed, and so she thinks she ought to be here with him. Someone ought to.

She thinks maybe Xander's feeling even guiltier than she is, because he didn't know Maima much better than Fred did. He tells her everything he does know, which isn't a lot, and everything that was supposed to be her future--education, training, a chance to help people.... 

She hasn't ever thought a whole lot of the Council. She knows they fired Wesley, and she saw how his father--or anyway, the cyborg version of Wesley's father, who was close enough to fool Wesley--had behaved. Even this new incarnation of it hadn't impressed her a lot, from what she'd seen. 

Xander's different. Not just because he's not English--neither's Andrew, after all--or because he's not wearing a suit. Not even because the eyepatch and a scar running from the back of his right hand all the way up to where it disappears under his sleeve, an inch or so above his elbow, make him look rough and dangerous. But because he's genuinely grieving for a girl he met two weeks ago, for the life she'd been excited about and now isn't ever going to have. 

He's wary of Fred; she can see it in his expression whenever she mentions Los Angeles, and she can't quite blame him. It's not like Wolfram & Hart doesn't have a worldwide reputation for major evil. But she's here, and he can talk to her about Maima without worrying about what lies he's going to tell for why he's been traveling around Africa with a teenaged girl, and Fred knows that sometimes that's more important than anything else. She gets it. It doesn't matter if he can't trust her; she's no immediate threat, and she gets it. 

So Fred listens while Xander tells her about Maima, and about the other girls he's sent to England, and about his friends. He tells her the story of how he got the scar on his arm, embellishing the fight with a vampire in Nairobi just enough to make it sound more exciting than Fred knows it is, but doesn't even mention his eye. Fred doesn't ask. 

She just listens, and then after a while, she talks. No one's told him about Cordelia, and they both cry when she does. And then she talks about everything else: about Pylea, and about Wolfram & Hart, and about the days when she's really not sure if they're doing any good any more. 

And for the first time, he cracks a slight smile as he says, "You know, if you're looking to change jobs, I could probably put in a word for you. We probably don't pay as much, but on the other hand, not evil."

"We're not evil," she insists, and doesn't mention that there are a lot of times that she's not sure they're _good_ any more, either. 

He just shrugs, and leans back, stretching out long, jeans-clad legs. Fred tucks her feet under herself, and takes another swallow of her beer. She doesn't like the taste of it all that much, wishes she had an American brand. 

They run out of depressing things to talk about eventually--or at least, they run out of things they're willing to talk about, and the talk turns to movies and music and the things Xander misses about America. 

"Junk food," he admits. "The kind where the ingredients list is 'sugar, grease, additives, preservatives.'"

She nods. "Know what I missed? Tacos. I mean, I missed my parents and soap and all kinds of things, but I missed tacos." Then, as an idea strikes her, she offers, "I could send you a care package," and is rewarded with a grin. 

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, sure, why not? A great big box of bad-for-you food." She grins back at him, and at least there's one little thing she can make better. 

She wonders if maybe she _shouldn't_ ask him to put in a word for her with the Council. She misses knowing for absolutely certain that she's making things better. 

But back in Los Angeles, there's Angel, and Wesley, and Charles, and everyone else she cares about, and so in the end, when they've said everything there is to say about Maima and Cordy and all the apocalypses that didn't quite happen, she kisses him on the cheek and then pulls out the phone the helicopter pilot had given her and calls for her ride back to Johannesburg. 

He gives her a phone number, written on the back of her hand because she can't find a piece of paper, just in case she changes her mind. 

Maybe she'll use it, one of these days.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
